Asgill raised his eyebrows impertinently. "An informer?" he said.
Colonel John did not flinch. "If necessary," he repeated.
"That would be serious," Asgill rejoined, "for many people. In the first place for the young lady, your ward, Colonel. Then for your kinsman—and Mr. Ulick Sullivan. After that for quite a number of honest gentlemen, tolerably harmless and tolerably well-reputed here, whose only fault is a tendency to heroics after dinner. It would be so serious, and for so many, Colonel, that for my part I should be glad to suffer in such good company. Particularly," he continued, with a droll look, the droller for his appreciation of the Colonel's face of discomfiture, "as being a Protestant and a Justice, I should, ten to one, be the only person against whom the story would not pass. Eh, Colonel, what do you think? So that, ten to one, I should go free, and the others go to Geordie's prison!"
Colonel John had not, to be honest, a word to say. He was fairly defeated, his flank turned, his guns captured. He had counted so surely on a panic, on the man whom he knew to be a knave proving also a coward, that even his anger—and he was very angry—could not hide his discomfiture. He looked, indeed, so rueful, and at the same time so wrathful, that Asgill laughed aloud.
"Come, Colonel," he said, "it is no use to scowl at me. We know you never call any one out. Let me just hint that wits in Ireland are not quite so slow as in colder countries, and that, had I been here a week back, you had not found it so easy to——"
"To what, sir?"
"To send two old women to sea in a cockboat," Asgill replied. And he laughed anew and loudly. But this time there was no gaiety in his laugh. If the Colonel had not performed the feat in question, in how different a state things might have been at this moment! Asgill felt murderous towards him as he thought of that; and the weapon of the flesh being out of the question—for he had no mind to face the Colonel's small-sword—he sought about for an arm of another kind, and had no difficulty in finding one. "More, by token," he continued, "if you are going to turn informer, it was a pity you did not send the young woman to sea with the old ones. But I'm thinking you'd not be liking to be without her, Colonel?"
Colonel John turned surprisingly red: perhaps he did not quite know why. "We will leave her out of the question, sir," he said haughtily. "Or—that reminds me! That reminds me," he continued, with increasing sternness. "You question my right to bid you begone——"
"By G—d, I do!" Asgill cried, with zest. He was beginning to enjoy himself.
"But you forget, I think, another little matter in the past that is known to me—and that you would not like disclosed, I believe, sir."